Dr. Botchkarev is a Research Fellow in Cancer Biology and Genetics at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. After graduating from Sharon High School, Dr. Botchkarev obtained his Bachelor's degree in Medical Science from the University of Leeds (UK) and completed his PhD work in Jim Haber's lab at Brandeis University on proteins that control cell division and the DNA damage response. Dr. Botchkarev is passionate about investigating cancer biology, taking pictures with microscopes, and science education. In his talk, Dr. Botchkarev will share with the audience scientific anecdotes from his career in hopes of inspiring students to enter the exciting world of STEM. Dr. Botchkarev is a Co-Founder of the Sharon STEM Talks.

Rylie Walsh is a graduate student in Molecular & Cellular Biology in the lab of Dr. Avital Rodal at Brandeis University. Rylie obtained her BS in Biology at Providence College and then worked as an electron microscopy technician at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA for two years before beginning her PhD. Rylie’s research centers around how cells sort important materials (such as proteins, lipids, and RNAs), particularly in neurons, where failures in these systems can lead to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. In her talk, Rylie will explain how the humble fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is used in her research to provide important insight into how neurons function – and she will show how researchers use microscopes to bring neurons to life.

Yitzi Calm is a Ph.D. candidate in the Dept. of Physics at Boston College researching nanophotonics. Yitzi is trying to answer the question, "how small of an object can be resolved using light?" Like any other area of science, this is a big question with many people working on it in their own creative way. There is no "one" right answer. One pathway Yitzi has explored is to trap light inside of tiny coaxial cables. But, in the bigger picture, what motivates that question in the first place is that confining light down to the nano-scale critically enables many useful, cutting-edge technologies. A famous person once said, "there is plenty of room at the bottom", meaning that the industry of miniaturizing our technology down to ever smaller scales has a long future ahead. Yitzi will discuss what inspired him to pursue a STEM career, some of the places he has worked, and his plans for after graduation.

November 14, 2019Dr. Avi Rodal, Brandeis UniversityNeuroscience

February 7, 2019Dr. Ruhul Abid,Brown UniversityGlobal Health

Dr. Ruhul Abid's global health work involves development of a workplace mobile health clinic for the garment factory workers in Bangladesh using a paperless, electronic medical record system for health screening and treatment of diseases.
More recent work involves two 8-member medical team serving 700,000 forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals to Bangladesh, called the Rohingya, since October 2017. The teams have been providing medical care to 250-300 patients per day (around 6,500 patients per month) in the makeshift camps of the Rohingya in Kutupalong and Balukhali, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. http://www.browndailyherald.com/2017/11/16/prof-provides-health-care-displaced-rohingya-refugees/ https://www.brown.edu/initiatives/global-health/news/2016-11/health-wheels

April 11, 2019Dr. Lauren Zasadil (Amon Lab), MIT2n or not 2n: Can Errors in Mitosis Lead to Cancer?

Dr. Zasadil is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. She received her Bachelor’s degrees in Molecular Biology and Linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh, and her PhD in Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. Her PhD work focused on the mechanisms by which cells with an abnormal chromosome content contribute to the initiation and growth of cancers, as well as response to chemotherapeutics. In her postdoctoral work, she is investigating a role for the immune system in detection and clearance of cells with an abnormal chromosome content. Dr. Zasadil is an advocate for appreciation of the visual world of science, and science art. Her talk will focus on the causes and consequences of errors during cell division, and how we can build from observations in mouse models which have been engineered to exhibit defects in this process.